Reprint of the original, first published in 1874.

This history of one of the most contentious educational issues in America examines bilingual instruction in the United States from the common school era to the recent federal involvement in the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing from school reports, student narratives, legal resources, policy documents, and other primary sources, the work teases out the underlying agendas and patterns in bilingual schooling during much of America s history. The study demonstrates clearly how the broader context - the cultural, intellectual, religious, demographic, economic, and political forces - shaped the contours of dual-language instruction in America between the 1840s and 1960s. Ramsey s work fills a crucial void in the educational literature and addresses not only historians, linguists, and bilingual scholars, but also policymakers and practitioners in the field.

This book explores the efforts of educational reformers who sought to link secondary and higher education in the decades after 1870. Through various state, regional, and national initiatives, these reformers created a hierarchical system, laid the foundation for a growing standardization in education, and influenced who would have access to college. Neither higher education nor the secondary branches dominated the other in creating this educational system. Rather, through debate, argument, and accommodation, the two levels mutually shaped each other in a time of significant political and economic change. Reformers today wrestle with this legacy as they continue to forge connections between the two educational levels.

In The Qualified Student Harold S. Wechsler focuses on methods of student selection used by institutions of higher education in the United States. More specifically, he discusses the way that college and university reformers employed those methods to introduce higher education into a broader cross-section of America, by extending access to an increased number of students from nontraditional backgrounds. Implicit in much of this book is an underlying social and ethical question: How legitimate was and is higher education's regulation of social mobility? Public concern over colleges' and universities' practices became inevitable once they became regulators between social classes. The challenging of colleges' admissions policies in the courts augments similar concerns that have been present in legislatures for decades. The volume is divided into three main sections: Prerequisites, Columbia and the Selective Function, and Implications. It focuses mainly on four universities, The University of Michigan, Columbia University, the University of Chicago, and the City University of New York. Wechsler maintains that unlike other universities, these institutions were pacesetters; they did not adopt a new policy simply because some other college had already adopted it. A new introduction brings the book, originally published in 1977, up to date and demonstrates its continuing importance in today's academic world of selective admissions.